small space at home for much cookery, and finds more satisfaction in the
flavor of food prepared outside. The throats, tanned and parched by much
beer, are sensitive only to something with the most distinct and
defined taste of its own; and so it is that whelks and winkles and
mussels and all forms of fish and flesh, that are to the American
uneatably strong and unpleasant, make the luxuries of the English poor.
They are conservative, also, like all the poor, and prefer old
acquaintances to new; and the costers and sellers of all sorts realize
this, and seldom go beyond an established list.

It is always "somethin' 'ot" that the workman craves; and small wonder,
when one has once tested London climate, and found that, nine months out
of twelve, fog and mist creep chill into bones and marrow, and that a
fire is comfortable even in July. November accents this fact sharply,
and by November the pea-soup and eel-soup men are at their posts, and
about market and dock, and in lane and alley, the trade is brisk. Near
Petticoat Lane, one of the oddest of London's odd corners, small
newsboys rush up and take a cupful as critically as I have seen them
take waffles from the old women purveyors of these delicacies about City
Hall Park and Park Row, while hungry costers and workmen appear to find
it the most satisfactory of meals.

One must have watched the eel baskets at Billingsgate, and then read the
annual consumption, before it is possible to understand how street after
street has its eel-pie house, and how the stacks of small pies in the
windows are always disappearing and always being renewed. It would seem
with eel pies as with oysters, of which Sam Weller stated his conviction
that the surprising number of shops and stalls came from the fact that
the moment a man found himself in difficulties he "rushed out and ate
oysters in reg'lar desperation." It is certain that some of the eaters
look desperate enough; but the seller is a middle-aged, quiet-looking
man, who eyes his customers sharply, but serves them with generous
cupfuls. The sharpness is evidently acquired, and not native, and he has
need of it, the London newsboys, who are his best patrons, being ready
to drive a bargain as keen as their fellows on the other side of the
sea. His stand is opposite a cat's-meat market, a sausage shop in
significant proximity, and he endures much chaffing as to the make-up
of his pea soup, which he sells in its season. But it is eels